Radio and Fox News host Sean Hannity will deliver a dinner “capstone” speech for a major Tea Party event to commemorate the five year anniversary of the beginning of the center-right, anti-establishment movement that swept the GOP into control of the House in 2010 and has deeply shaped the events in Congress since then.
The Feb. 27 event, hosted by the Tea Party Patriots, has already lined up other top figures from the Tea Party, including Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) and radio host, author and former Reagan official Mark Levin.
Stephen K. Bannon, Breitbart News’ Executive Chairman, will introduce Hannity at the dinner, hosted at the Capitoll Hill Hyatt Regency.
Hannity was in Atlanta in 2009 for the first round of Tax Day Tea Parties and has followed the movement closely from his perch at Fox News and on over 500 radio stations nationwide.
“His refusal to abandon principle in favor of party subservience has been welcome respite from pundits and policymakers who cave easily in the face of adversity,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of TPP.
Most observers point to CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s famous rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in February 2009 as the birth of the Tea Party movement. At the time, in February 2009, Congress had bailed out Wall Street several months before and President Obama had just rammed through his $800 billion stimulus bill.
The Tea Party quickly gained traction, leading to major rallies in D.C. to protest Obamacare, which was under consideration in Congress at the time.
The resulting 2010 wave election brought scores of conservative and Tea Party lawmakers to the halls of Congress, where they have pushed for conservative reforms and upended conventional wisdom and expectations about how Washington works.